Calendar

Manic Monday Markup 7/25/16…

We begin today in Russia, toward which investigators are increasingly pointing fingers for a hack and leak of Democratic National Committee emails. While the emails have led to tangible fallout in the Democratic Party’s central national organ (see The Feds), the notion that Russia meddling in a US election has raised fresh alarm in the fraught American presidential election. Though the Republican presidential nominee, real estate tycoon and provocateur Donald Trump, denied connection to Russian influence, his financial and political connections—through his campaign chair Paul Manafort, an advisor to Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s Krelmin-based deposed president—are increasingly difficult to ignore. Russian interest in electing Trump is visible in the latter’s distaste for NATO. Trump’s campaign, while laissez-faire about much of the GOP platform successfully fought to keep anti-Russian language out.

Members of the Labour party in the United Kingdom have sued to overturn the new restriction placed on the voting process for Owen Smith’s leadership challenge of incumbent leader Jeremy Corbyn.

The fate of the UK-Irish border and Ireland itself is a big question mark in Britain’s Brexit negotiations with the European Union. However, UK Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to say border checks are not coming back.

Haaretz slams Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for, at the behest of his coalition partners, maneuvering to cancel a requirement that Haredi or ultra-Orthodox schools which received state funds also teach core subjects.

In Philadelphia, the convention has gotten off to a rocky start as Florida US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Chair of the Democratic National Committee (until Thursday), resigned after a dump of innocuous, but mean-spirited and inappropriate emails were released by Wikileaks. Interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile has issued a formal apology to the Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and his supporters. Wasserman Schultz even ceded the opening gavel to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.

I’ve been reading through these DNC emails all day. I’ve seen no evidence that the primary elections were manipulated against Bernie. None.

Moreover, Sanders supporters won a study on dramatically reducing superdelegates’ influence in addition to their policy wins. But Sanders delegates are not having it. To his credit, however, Sanders and his campaign are pushing back hard and his and Clinton’s people will be whipping against heckling during the convention.

The Sanders and Clinton campaigns are merging their floor whip teams in order to prevent outbursts, per a party official #DemsInPhilly

Even the man himself, while addressing his supporters today in Philadelphia, could not quell boos when he invoked the need to elect former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Virginia Senator Tim Kaine as President and Vice-President. Sanders speak to the convention tonight as does Senator Elizabeth Warren in what may be a last ditch effort to put out this fire, which, polling suggest is confined to Sanders’s delegates, not his voters.

"Brothers and sisters, this is the real world that we live in," Sanders says, after being booed for urging supporters to vote for Clinton.

With Kaine Clinton’s Veep nominee, should the ticket win, it will fall to Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to appoint a successor who will have to run in a special election in November and then again for a full term the following year.

The State of Things:

The legislature reversed about $100 million in cuts Gov. Charlie Baker made the state budget. Among those things saved were early voting funds

Baker had said he would support imposing the commonwealth’s hotel tax on AirBNB rentals as a matter of fairness, but demurred today saying the Senate’s language goes too far. Baker also retreated on a easement that may have undermined the State House grounds’ historic integrity.

Gun advocates freak out over Attorney General Maura Healey’s push to ban copycat guns that shirk the state’s assault weapons ban. Westfield Senator Don Humason files a bill to strip Healey’s office of its oversight on the matter. Even if the session didn’t end July 31, the bill’s passage would be bloody unlikely.

Worcester is poised to smoke up as many medical marijuana (dispensary licenses) that it can under state law.

Rail advocates are hopeful after the publication of a study on train service in the 413.

The Fourth Estatements:

The Fox News saga continues. The Timesdigs into how bad things were under Roger Ailes, who resigned last week. The executive Vice-President and his deputy are also leaving Fox. Now New York Magazine write Gabriel Sherman says over 25 women complained to 21st Century Fox’s investigators and now the network’s programming chief has retained counsel.

With Democratic discord in Philadelphia and relative quiet in the streets—if terrifyingly looney and dangerous rhetoric from the stage—it can be easy to lose sight of any given moment in the political cycle. Of course despite Berniecrats opposing Bernie, there is not necessarily anything novel about the fringes disrupting conventions. Today we award the tweet prize to former Mitt Romney strategist and Trump critics Stuart Stevens for pointing this out. There were boos for Clinton from Jerry Brown supporters in 1992, for example. Of course, Stevens was quick to identify who the main disrupter from the fringes was last week in Cleveland, the man odiously crowned the GOP’s nominee for president.

They're always exuberant crazies at conventions who attack members of their own party. Just this year, one gave acceptance speech at RNC.